45 Medical Workers Share The Most Disgusting Things They’ve Seen In Oblivious Patients

While working in a nursing home we had a patient transferred with an absolutely huge pressure sore on his buttocks. He was meant to start a wound vac upon arrival but the wound nurse at that nursing home thought she was god and could heal anything so she made up her own order instead.

The order? Clean it, pack it with normal saline soaked gauze and then cover it with an abdominal pad. I worked weekends and I watched it deteriorate more and more. Brought it up to management- never addressed of course because it’s cheaper to do that order than it was to do the right thing— the wound vac. He would ask me every time if it was getting better and every time I would tell him no but for some reason the wound nurse and wound doctor were feeding him lies that he unfortunately believed.

I was super pregnant when he came so when I came back from maternity leave I was shocked 1) to still see him alive 2) to see just how bad his wound had gotten. It was the most rotten, foul smelling, super thick green/yellow discharge I’ve ever seen in my career thus far. By that point he was literally rotting and going septic. He lost his mind and will to live. I had to fight to convince him to please let me change the dressing but by that point he was beyond saving or being able to be convinced. Still I had to try because it was so awful.

He passed away not too long after my return. That nurse was fired and reported by so many people but according to the state board of nursing still has a license. So long story short after typing all that out I think the most foul and disgusting thing I’ve ever encountered in my career is just how many nursing homes/healthcare professionals can be absolute pieces of trashwho do not take care of patients and nothing happens to them even when reported.

A patient had such severe gangrenous necrosis in both legs below the knee. She had been crawling around her apartment. The smell permeated the whole unit. I had a nursing student with me to change the dressings. Doused a mask with peppermint oil and put another mask over the top. I was legit afraid that her leg would just come off in my hands while changing the dressing. She was so afraid of surgery that it still took several days to convince her it was necessary.

The 'Maggot Cast.' We had a patient come in with a leg cast he hadn't removed in nearly six months. He said he 'felt a little tickle.' When we finally sawed it off, the smell hit us before the visual did. The entire space between his skin and the plaster was a thriving, writhing ecosystem of maggots. The worst part? They had actually done such a good job eating the necrotic tissue that they likely saved him from sepsis. He looked down and just said, 'Oh, I wondered why it felt heavy.

Called out for weakness and wife tells us that he had been crawling around for a day or two (older couple where the husband has the final say dynamic.) Wife is telling me about a spot in 2002 while my partner was assessing the husband, and I was trying to redirect the conversation to events happening now. Walk into the bathroom where he’s sitting on the toilet, and turns to look at me and that spot from 2002 was now necrotizing half his head. Corner of the eye to the back of his head was untreated skin cancer. Ear was gone, which ironically his only complaint was that ear itched. They had been covering it up with a beanie style hat when he would go out and he just refused to go to the doctor for the whole 50+ years they had known each other.

A majority of my medical career was spent working in plastic surgery at a level 1 trauma center. Ive seen lots of cases so heres my maggot story: We had a homeless patient that came to the ED for chest pain and had literally 10 layers of socks on. When the socks were removed all of his metatarsal bones were fully exposed, no flesh. He didnt even realize his foot was basically all bones because he had went years without taking off his socks. It probably started as a diabetic ulcer but the maggots did their job plus some.

The one that still keeps me up at night: a baby girl (18 mos) comes into the pediatric ER via ambulance with Grandma. Awake and alert, EMS reports baby has been brought in for neglect assessment. This baby is dirty dirty- dirt in between the cells of her skin, embedded in every crease.

Baby girl has shop towels tied on as a diaper, padded with boxer shorts, a tank top, and tube socks. I cut the “diaper” open, and start removing the soaked and soiled padding, and realized the first layer is fused to her skin.

Her entire diaper “area” from belly button to knees and all the way around is one gigantic, and severely infected, wound. Equivalent to third and fourth degree burns. She screamed the most gut twisting screams when air moved over what was left of that skin. We soaked off the fabric, and covered her with temporary bandaging as soon as we could. She refused to stay in the bed, and Grandma was talking with police, so after a bed bath and graham crackers, she got to stay in my lap. 1 to 1 care for that angel. She snuggled right in and slept like she spent 40 days and nights crossing the desert.

She spent 7 months on the peds burn unit with surgeries and grafts… It’s been 18 years and I still think of her, how that skin looked and smelled…her gigantic eyes and sweet smile. I hope she got the life she deserved and the scars aren’t too bad.

The more common one: The patient living in terrible hoarder (animals and items) conditions whose leg ulcers had gotten so bad they had maggots in them and was so oblivious we made up reasons why we had to treat them on the porch because we couldn’t physically go into the house. We had to put those on the last appointment of the day to prevent cross contamination with any other patients/homes.

Mother brought her toddler in who had been vomiting big time. Incredibly sick. Like deadly sick. Mother decided that her kid got sick eating Ants from the garden

What did she do? She gave her child ant poison to stop the ants making her sick….

Yeah…….

Relayed to me by a friend: elderly frequent flyer comes in last summer and for some reason or another a hospital staff member is sent to retrieve something from her RV. Staff member gets to the RV, opens the door and is swarmed with flies. When those dissipate, they see a mummified corpse. Turns out her husband had died a while ago of natural causes and she’d been living in the RV with the remains for who knows how long. Apparently she did not think it necessary to warn the staff member she was sending to the vehicle when she handed over the keys. When asked she said something about not knowing what to do with the body when he died so she just left it.

Orthodontic assistant, teenage patient came in with his dad, hadn't been in for years. Dad says he cant eat is basically on a liquid diet.I lean him back and see the rapid palatal expander we put in years ago was still cemented to his teeth. RPE's are usually only in the mouth for 3-6 months. His oral hygiene was terrible so the gums had completely grown around the entire appliance. There was barely any of the metal visible and what was visible was caked with calculus. I worked at getting that think off for so long. Eventually I got the doctor to take a look. We ended not being able to get it off that day. He came back again later and the doctor was able to somehow work her magic and pry that thing out his face.

Obese woman came into the ER because she had an itch. We found the cause. It seems, behind the remote control in one of her folds of fat, there was a whole colony of cockroaches. They scattered around the hospital pretty quickly.

A very nice couple came in from a rural area for the wife to have a short elective procedure. The smell of them combined was enough to clear out our unit. Everyone was throwing on masks. They were from the middle of nowhere where I think they must not have had (or at least regularly used) running water. They smelled like a giant, moist, yeasty, bacteria-infested groin. We had to have the curtains changed after they left because the smell was lingering.

A homeless man came in complaining that his foot has been hurting for some time. He was wearing some really old work boots and said he hasn’t taken them off in over a year. Took off the boot and a toe fell out. The smell almost cleared the room.

Well…oblivious because he was d**d, but one time I was notified by the roommate of this poor soul in a skilled nursing facility that I needed to go check on him. When I walked in the room I found him hanging by a flap of skin that had been flayed off of his thigh. He had tried using his call button to call for help during a heart attack, but instead he confused it with the bed adjustment button. He had raised his bed all the way up, in fully sitting position. He tried to climb out of bed and his skin got caught on the railing and basically devolved his entire thigh. It’s unclear whether he died of shock from the degloving, or the heart attack…but his obituary said he died peacefully in his sleep.

Get your skin checked, especially if you live in a sunny climate and have fairer skin. I cannot stress this enough.

I once saw a patient's eyeball *from behind*. The patient had skin cancer that got out of control and rotted off most of their face. The skull was exposed, from the mandible (jawbone) to zygomatic arch (cheekbone). Much of the bone was involved, and the part of the skull that holds the eyeball had mostly rotted away. That's how I could see the back of the patient's eyeball.

The smell was overpowering, to say the least. Thankfully, the patient was not at all alert and oriented.

He had severe mental illness which caused him to eat his fingers, infection in the bone and his blood and had to be restrained so he wouldn’t continue to eat his fingers. He was in the hospital for months, eventually his meds got straight enough he stopped trying to eat them and he healed.

While working in an urgent care a daughter brought her elderly father. He had dementia and his finger was swelling around his wedding ring and beginning to cut into his skin. It wasn’t all that gross, but he would occasionally almost forget that he was in pain ??? and mindlessly try to twist the ring around on his finger out of habit, digging it in deeper and drawing more blood. He’d do it over and over and didn’t seem to register he was in pain until his daughter would tell him to stop. It was so hard to watch even though I’ve seen much nastier stuff over my career.

Bed Bugs..Idk about oblivious but he sure didn't give a flying F. As he sat in the waiting room. He comes back to Pre Op (this was a surgery center) As I am prepping him for surgery he's getting into a gown. I notice he is covered in what had to be thousands of bugs. Crawling all over the guy...They shut down the Center for 2 days after he came in..

Matted hair with severe lice infestation that I had to cut out, maggots in new amputation (patient discharged to nursing home & came back in as re-admit), wax buildup in ears so thick other nurses were documenting hearing aids, loads of patients coming in that were neglected with feces caked and dried in every crevice of their body, necrotic toes that the patient proceeded to pull off and hand to me, 12+ inch long fingernails that were curled up and dusty…. the list is truly never ending when you work bedside.

Gentleman had a cut on his leg and went swimming in a polluted lake. He ignored the infection to the point where he was either gonna lose his leg or his life. Surgeons did multiple amputations, first at the ankle and then at the knee. It was gnarly.

We were treating a guy for late stage head & neck cancer and colon cancer. The chemo for his colon cancer made some crazy reaction in his bowels that released the most disgusting fowl smelly gas that any of us had ever smelled in our lives and he couldn’t stop releasing it while getting radiation treatment. Four of us including myself threw up (and gross smells never bother me) and the whole area had to be aired out because other patients started retching or leaving. Words cannot describe what was coming out of him

Another day, while his head & neck cancer was raging and his mouth was basically an open wound full of pus that smelled of death we walked outside to find him making out his with girlfriend who was also being treated for cancer (something must have been in their water). Think of someone not brushing their teeth for a year or two and having their mouth filled with mucus. Some areas were necrosed and smelled like a dead body and here they were making out 🤢

He also never stopped smoking. I can’t even imagine how bad the smoke had to hurt on his raw mouth and throat. Like smoking with strep throat x 1000.

ETA: this was in early 2000s and radiation treatments have come a long way since then.